So I had this idea for a holiday mani that would feature sort of... deconstructed Christmas trees using stamping. I actually tried a few different versions of this idea, but it wasn't until I decided to try out using some dots stamping images that I feel fairly confident were not necessarily intended for this particular use that it came together. It's probably the most sort of... non-traditionally holiday design I've done this month, but I think there's just something so cool about how this came together!

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When it comes to the color story for this mani, I knew I wanted to use a really bright and festive red and that I wanted at least one of my stamping polishes to be metallic. I landed on using Dimension Nails' Bearded Ghoul as my base fairly quickly. This bold red jelly polish is packed with a sort of fuscia shimmer along with super fine black glitters, which I think gives it a really unique look while still being fairly straight forward. For the stamping polishes, I decided to go with silver for my metallic, white for some strong contrast, and finally black to add some depth and really ground the design.

To start, I applied two coats of Bearded Ghoul to all of my nails as my base. 

Now, for the stamping, I wanted to sort of reference a Christmas tree or a forest of evergreens in a way that was quite abstract and almost deconstructed in vibe and this plate has the perfect stamping images to create that. I chose a few lines that had dots that went from larger to smaller and applied lines of each color starting with the larger dots at the tip of the nail. I applied different rows of dots at different heights on the nail to give a sort of forest vibe (when you think about it that way.) I overlapped the rows just slightly as well, but I only did 5 or 6 rows per nail so as not to overwhelm the design.

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and then finished with a glossy top coat to for shine and volume. And voila!

So like I said, this really isn't your traditional, on-the-nose sort of holiday mani and I really think it would be appropriate for pretty much anytime, but the combination of the festive red base and the shapes of the deconstructed Christmas trees really makes it feel seasonally appropriate to me. Also, I continue to love finding ways to use stamping images that weren't necessarily how they were intended and I think this is a solid way to use this one.